Chapter 12: Vulnerability and Patch Management

Overview

Vulnerabilities continue to surface at alarming rates, consuming an increasing amount of time and resources for both small and large enterprises worldwide. This chapter discusses vulnerability and patch management and introduces steps that organizations can take in order to implement a patch management process.

This chapter will provide information on the following:

  • Vulnerability Lifecycle The lifecycle of a security vulnerability from research, discovery, and reporting to patch availability. We discuss industry standards that have been developed to turn what was chaos into order.

  • Discovery How to become aware of new security vulnerabilities. Both public and commercial mechanisms exist in order to remain aware of today's threats.

  • Prioritization How to prioritize a given vulnerability within your environment.

  • Deployment Tools and techniques that you can use to deploy security patches within your organization.

Vulnerability management is the process of managing the lifecycle of vulnerabilities within your organization. Firstly, in a pure sense, vulnerability management should be distinguished from patch management, although ultimately both go hand in hand and are required to maintain adequate protection from today's latest threats. For practical purposes, many organizations may not differentiate between the two. Patch management encompasses much of vulnerability management and vice versa, although they do not overlap in their entirety. Patches are not always security- related , for example, and vulnerabilities cannot always be mitigated by patches or software updates (at least not initially).

What do we define as a vulnerability? The word vulnerability can have a much broader meaning, but for our purposes we define it simply as a software or hardware implementation or design flaw leading to the exposure of information systems. Although not always the case, the majority of vulnerabilities are a result of the accidental introduction of such a defect into a software application. In many cases this happens due simply to a lack of awareness on the software developer's part.

Vulnerability management encompasses all of the traditional criteria of patch management with one significant difference: a race against time before a threat surfaces. As opposed to traditional patches that may be installed when convenient , today's threats introduce a new sense of urgency into the patching process.



Extreme Exploits. Advanced Defenses Against Hardcore Hacks
Extreme Exploits: Advanced Defenses Against Hardcore Hacks (Hacking Exposed)
ISBN: 0072259558
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 120

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